Nanban Religious Architecture. A Forgotten Heritage

Abstract

This chapter provides a general introduction to Christian architecture in Japan during the so-called "Nanban Century" or "Christian Century" (1543-1640). The prayer spaces established by missionaries in Japan consisted in a first phase of the use of rooms inside private houses or abandoned temples adapted for the purpose; a second short-lived phase saw the construction of buildings based on European standards. In the last phase, the religious facilities returned to forms more in keeping with their Japanese context, while introducing some European elements. Because of the temporary nature of these structures and subsequent religious repressions, few remains of these buildings survive; moreover, the graphic representations of such religious facilities on late 16th / early 17th-century Nanban folding screens are often unreliable, because they do not perfectly correspond to contemporary written descriptions

Matched Nanban terms

• anchor nanban

Provenance

• core (10.17613/ssaw-mg42)
  2026-04-30T19:59:07.608860+00:00

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